Revisiting the year’s best shows
From battles of the sexes to rollicking send-ups and tales of heartbreak and loss, it’s been a lively year in theatre
JANUARY La Cage Aux Folles (Bord Gáis Theatre)
A dazzling production of a Frenchstyle musical version of Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner; the problem no longer black marrying white but a rigidly conservative family getting involved in nuptials with an undercover gay family. What was once cutting edge in 1973 has become an almost charming old-fashioned sitcom. The only visible sex was in the over-the-top cross-dressing.
FEBRUARY Million Dollar Quartet (Bord Gáis Theatre)
A rousing homage to the day in 1956 when Elvis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis came together in Sam Phillips’s studio in Memphis for the first and last time. The show didn’t go into Jerry Lee’s marital ventures, including marriage to his 13-yearold cousin, but Ashley Carruthers on piano and vocals turned in a star performance as he tinkled, caressed and pounded the piano in the best Jerry Lee style, and the finale of great Balls Of Fire and Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On had the audience stamping.
The Humours Of Bandon (Tour)
Actor, dancer and writer Margaret McAuliffe’s delightful and insightful take on the world of Irish dancing competitions. As well as portraying the problems caused by fussing relatives, she gave us such esoteric problems as your bladder insisting on a trip to a dubious toilet – while you’re wearing an elaborate dress and are just about to be called to strut your stuff in Bonaparte’s Retreat. And she didn’t just talk about it all; she gave nifty demonstrations of the technicalities and niceties off the art.
MARCH Dublin By Lamplight (Abbey)
A revival of the rollicking sendup of theatrical pretentiousness and political bombast, set in 1904, the year Joyce wrote Ulysses. There was a role for the dying Cúchulainn, a caricature of Oscar Wilde by Paul Reid, Karen Egan was a super-melodramatic Maud Gonne-like figure, Louis Lovett delivered a kind of third division WB Yeats, and the play-withina-play had some hilariously cod mythical language. The second half didn’t work as well, when brutal reality burst in on codology but it was a genuine nugget of theatrical entertainment.
APRIL Waiting For Godot (Abbey)
Druid’s definitive version of Beckett’s chilling outlook on lives driven by deceptive hope was funny, bleak, beautiful, and superbly acted by Aaron Monaghan as a cantankerous Estragon, and Marty Rea as a nimble-footed Vladimir. It captured all the nuance of pathos and heartbreak involved in two men living in a vast featureless landscape, ‘blathering about nothing in particular’, comforting each other but always finding something to give the impression that they exist.
Private Lives (Gate)
Noel Coward’s blistering battle of the sexes faultlessly directed by Patrick Mason, about the destructive possibilities in self-obsessed love, was given a brilliant production that released all the wit, passion and bloody-mindedness of a warring couple, divorced and re-married yet unable to keep their minds or hands off each other. It’s not so much the age of equality as the age of mutual insult brought to a fine art. Rebecca O’Mara was particularly good as a dangerously attractive woman, and Shane O’Reilly was beautifully belligerent without losing the outrageous humour that didn’t spare feminist sensibilities.
JULY The Great Gatsby (Gate)
Not totally successful as a dramatisation of the Scott Fitzgerald novel; the themes of lavish living, empty lives and loneliness were sometimes lost in the razzmatazz, but it was a brilliantly conceived and executed version that opened the whole theatre to the audience making them part of the performance, had different things going on in different parts of the thea-
‘It’s not so much the age of equality as the age of mutual insult brought to a fine art’
tre, and made great demands on the performers. A huge exercise in the logistics of directing and movement.
Funny Girl (Bord Gáis Theatre)
Sheridan Smith took on the role of Fanny Brice, the legendary but unlikely showgirl who hadn’t the looks or dancing skills considered obligatory for early 20th Century Broadway but whose talents overcame all the odds. Smith had to banish any memories of Barbra Streisand’s reputation as the legendary singer, dancer and comic, and she delivered an exhausting, five-star versatile performance, including dancing that was nicely tongue-in-cheek Twenties-style. The show wasn’t just Smith and second-string support – the cameo roles were equally memorable.
DECEMBER Let The Right One In (Abbey)
The Abbey’s Scandinavian shock-horror mix of blood, bullying and revenge is a far cry from the jollity of pantos all round the country. It’s also an almost quaint love story, involving a young boy and a ruthless vampire girl. The setting is a Swedish forest, the sort that innocent girls often wander through in folk tales. There are fine performances but this is very much a director’s production, backed up by some excellent atmospheric sound and special effects.
The Red Shoes (Gate, until January 27)
An extraordinary mixture of styles and emotions, full of wicked black humour, gloom and satire – involving bankers, builders and social climbers – with great individual performances. The Hans Christian Andersen story about sin and salvation has been converted into one about self-expression and self-belief. Despite the obvious influence of Cinderella, The Wizard Of Oz and Little Orphan Annie, it’s not a show for children under eight. It needed cutting, especially at the end but it’s a masterclass in presentation and movement by Selina Cartmell and Liz Roche.